NinjaCipher » python

Selling clients on Django

mattd — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:39:23 +0000

So right up front let me just say that I love Django. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been to my site. I think its a great framework and I really enjoy working with it. That being said all too often my clients look like a deer in headlights when I suggest using it for their projects. Unfortunately that usually means that they want to use… PHP ::dies::

Now not that there aren’t some decent PHP frameworks out there but lets be honest if I had my druthers the clear winner would ALWAYS be Python/Django. Once in awhile I will get someone who is a little bit more open minded and they will suggest Rails. Which again is fine… I would rather write Ruby then PHP any day but it still is a far cry from Django IMHO.

So my question is this… how do you sell a client on the idea of using Django?! I would love to hear your thoughts about it. To preface my client base is normally entertainment industry based (Record labels, TV networks and Movie Studios). They tend to have overly bloated IT departments that take 7 months to handle an app we can crank out in a matter of weeks. The usual roadblocks I hear are “we don’t support python” or “we have no python resources to maintain the app after your done”. Basically I think my clients tend to think that I’m suggesting they build in Django not out of trying to use the best tool for the job but more as a job security language (jsl).

Anyway as you can prob tell this is a constant source of frustration and any advice would be very much appreciated.

Top 5 Django IDEs

mattd — Sat, 02 May 2009 03:22:24 +0000

I’ve seen a lot of people out there looking for a good IDE for doing Django work. Personally I’m a pydev guy. I have been using Eclipse for so long for everything else it’s very natural to keep on that path. However there are definitely other alternatives out there. Here is a list of other IDEs and editors that have Django support.

Eclipse with PyDev (part of Aptana now)
TextMate with Django Bundle (technically not an IDE but allot of people love it)
Netbeans with Django Plugin
Wing
Komodo with Django Komodo Kit

So I’m sure some of you people out there will say man up… use VIM or Emacs… be a real programmer! To that I say have at it. If that’s your preference then do what works best for you. By all means, leave me a comment and tell my how wrong I am and/or glow about how good your IDE/editor is. Long story short Django is an awesome framework and whatever you choose to work in I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Reality Check!

Of course there are other options out there. And top 5 doesn’t mean these are the best. But from my research these are the editors most people seem to be using.

Oh BirdyPy

mattd — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:47:27 +0000

Just started a new open source python wrapper for the twitter rest and search apis. I’m trying to stay as 1 to 1 as I can with the names and function arguments so its pretty much an exact match to the twitter api docs. Also adding a django test app that includes models for serializing all of the return object types to the db. You can check it out here. If you have some time and want to help shoot me an email and I will add you to the project. The codes is still a very unfinished work in progress. Definitely not ready for prime time at this point, but hell sharing is caring and who knows… someone out there may want to help. LOL